One Thing Is Clear From Hillary Clinton's Benghazi Testimony: Al Qaeda Is Still Thriving

Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 23, 2013,
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the
attack on the the U.S. diplomatic mission to
Libya.J. Scott Applewhite
(AP)

As all eyes focus on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
congressional hearings todayregarding the attacks in Benghazi, Libya,
one thing is very clear: The terrorist group Al Qaeda is still
very much alive, and business is still booming.

"Concerns about terrorism and instability in North Africa are not
new. Indeed they have been a top priority for
our entire national security team," said Clinton in her opening statement. "But after Benghazi, we
accelerated a diplomatic campaign to increase pressure on al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other terrorist groups across
the region."

With the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad,
Pakistan on May 2, 2011, along with U.S. military
excursions into Afghanistan and Iraq, it was assumed that Al
Qaeda was down for the count. As recent events in
North Africa have shown that is certainly not the
case. Instead of being broken, the group's affiliates have still
carried out successful attacks and are now carving out their own
country in Mali.

The attacks of 9/11 were not an Al Qaeda finale, but
actually the opener in a long-term strategy against the United
States. With the memory of the fight against the Soviet Union
(and that country's demise) always with them, they had the goal
of forcing the U.S. into a
war of attrition across many Islamic countries in an effort to
undermine the U.S. economy.

Their predictionwas the eventual economic collapse of the
U.S. by 2020, from the strain of multiple engagements. If we look
at the 1-0 record vs. Moscow, their confidence is not
surprising.

It's important to realize,
however, that the Al Qaeda "core" that Osama bin Laden
established is not a centralized organization. In fact, the main
group based in Pakistan has not had a major attack in many years.
Playing off the success of the Al Qaeda name, many groups have
emerged with similar names that retain some or little ties to the
core group. These offshoots have names such as Al-Qaeda in Iraq,
or Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Al Qaeda has already achieved
the first two of its five strategic stages — provoking the United
States into invading a Muslim country, and inciting resistance
within by the local populace. Now we are seeing them apparently
hit stage three: expansion of the conflict to neighboring
countries in an effort to bog down the U.S. and its strategic
allies in a war of attrition.

The Arab Spring brought major change to Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen,
and Libya. But veteran CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, the former head of the bin
Laden unit, believes that "all of this amounts to an
enormous strategic step forward for al-Qaeda." They've invested
virtually nothing into these conflicts, but may possibly see a
hand in future governance.

In Libya, there was a major AlQaeda attack on the
U.S. Embassy that took the life of the ambassador and three other
Americans. According to the New York Times, Al Qaeda fighters in Syria are "one of the most effective
forces fighting against President Bashar al-Assad." And more recently, there was a deadly attack in Algeria carried out by a
group also affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Which brings us to Mali. After
the democratic government was overthrown by the military,
insurgents saw an opening in the north. Two groups, Al-Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Ansar al Dine,
partnered to defeat government forces and effectively created
their own state governed by sharia law in the northern two-thirds
portion of the country.

"Al-Qaeda never owned
Afghanistan," said former United Nations diplomat Robert Fowler,
a Canadian kidnapped and held for 130 days by al-Qaida's local
chapter, whose fighters now control the main cities in the north.
"They do own northern Mali."

As the insurgency grew, France,
the former colonial power in Mali, intervened. French
President François Hollande said, "I
have decided that France will respond, alongside our African
partners, to the request from the Malian
authorities."

They have vowed to stay until
the conflict is resolved, but it's not going to be easy. As
veteran defense reporter Patrick
Cockburn of The Independent has pointed out,
the vastness of the country means that "the central
government, even with French air support, will have difficulty in
eliminating the Islamists."

But the French are not alone.
The U.S. is providing
intelligence, logistics, and aircraft support, although no American
combat troops have been committed to the fight. It certainly
remains an option, considering that Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton has called action against insurgents in Mali a "necessary
struggle."

"We cannot permit northern Mali to become a safe haven,"
Clinton said in Washington today. Ex-U.K. Prime
Minister Tony Blair agrees, telling Sky News,
"If you don't intervene and you let these countries become
terrorist states they will threaten the rest of the
world."

And they certainly have a
point: Al Qaeda used the safe haven of Afghanistan to launch its
most successful attack on 9/11. But Michael Scheuer sees
intervention into the Islamic world as playing right into their
hands.

"How tragic that in the war
being waged against the United States by al-Qaeda and its allies
precisely because of Washington's relentless intervention in the
Islamic world," wrote Scheuer shortly after the Arab Spring
swept the Middle East, "the U.S. government will now be forced to
intervene even more - or sit on the sidelines and watch al-Qaeda
build or expand bases from which to threaten U.S.
security."